Avraham Soskin

Born in 1881 in Orsha, Russian Empire (today in Belarus), Avraham Soskin was a member of the Zionist organization Po‘alei Zion (Workers of Zion). In 1904, he immigrated to Jaffa to set up a photography studio, having learned the art from his brother-in-law in the Russian Empire. As the only Jewish photographer in Jaffa at the time, Soskin was integral in documenting the early development of Tel Aviv and the people who built, lived, and worked in it. His most famous photograph is of the “seashell lottery” (1909), which shows the founding families of Tel Aviv standing in a sand dune drawing lots to determine on which plots of land they would build the city’s first homes. Soskin moved in 1913 to Tel Aviv’s Neve Shalom neighborhood, where he remained until his death.